Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Core Plus Mathematics Project. Sad isn't it? And if you're school is doing it, you don't have a prayer of changing it. Unless you get as mad as heck and start yelling at the idiots who don't realize it's rat poo.

SAN FRANCISCO – An editor of a weekly newspaper calling itself “The Voice of Asian America” apologized after Asian-American leaders condemned a column titled “Why I Hate Blacks.” In the piece, which appeared in the Feb. 23 edition of San Francisco-based AsianWeek, contributor Kenneth Eng lists reasons why he supports discrimination against blacks – including because “they are the only race that has been enslaved for 300 years.”

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Leaders at the Asian American Justice Center, Chinese for Affirmative Action, Coalition for Asian Pacific Americans and other groups began circulating a petition denouncing the column as “irresponsible journalism, blatantly racist, replete with stereotypes, and deeply hurtful to African Americans.” “It certainly does not speak for the vast majority of Asian Americans,” Stewart Kwoh, who heads the Asian Pacific American Legal Center in Los Angeles, said Tuesday. “This kind of inflammatory (column) really can hurt and damage relations with the broader African-American community.”

The petition calls on AsianWeek to cut ties with Eng, issue an apology, print an editorial refuting the column, and fire or demote the editors who published it.

AsianWeek, with a circulation of 48,505, issued a statement apologizing for “any harm or hurt this has caused the African American community.”

The newspaper plans to hold a news conference with NAACP leaders in San Francisco on Wednesday to discuss how the Asian and black communities “can be different and yet get along and work together,” said Ted Fang, the paper's editor-at-large.

“The newspaper is sorry that this got published, and I am personally sorry that this got published,” Fang told The Associated Press. “The views in that opinion piece do not in any way reflect the views of AsianWeek.”

The paper plans to review its policies to “understand how this happened and make sure it doesn't happen again,” Fang said, calling the decision to publish Eng's piece a “mistake.”

Fang's family publishes AsianWeek, along with a local newspaper called the Independent, and owned the San Francisco Examiner between 2000 and 2004.

Kenneth Eng, who has described himself as an “Asian Supremacist,” has written several columns for AsianWeek since November, including pieces titled “Proof That Whites Inherently Hate Us” and “Why I Hate Asians.”

Eng is in his early 20s and a graduate of New York University, according to a biography on a Web site promoting his science fiction writing.

A telephone listing for Eng could not immediately be located.

Mayor Gavin Newsom said in a statement that the column had “no place in a city that is known around the world for civil rights and equality for all people. I am deeply concerned, both for the opinions expressed in the column and the fact that these opinions were published in a local newspaper.”

Supervisor Sophie Maxwell, one of the city's top black officials, has co-sponsored a city resolution condemning the article and AsianWeek's decision to publish it. But she doesn't believe Eng's column will hurt relations between blacks and Asians in San Francisco.

“This man clearly is very ignorant of African-American history and his own history, and he's very angry,” said Maxwell, who represents a district with large black and Asian populations.

Concord, CA. high school tries to close achievement gap through Message List http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/16792877.htm

Academic pep talks are color codedBy Shirley DangCONTRA COSTA TIMES

With schools under increasing pressure to improve test scores, MountDiablo High School has resorted to a new way to motivate students: byrace.

The Concord campus on Friday held separate assemblies for students ofdifferent ethnicities to talk about last year's test results and theupcoming slew of state exams this spring.

Jazz music and pictures of Martin Luther King greeted African-Americanstudents, whereas Filipino, Asian and Pacific Islander students sawflags of their foreign homelands on the walls. Latinos and whitestudents each attended their own events, too, complete with statisticsshowing results for all ethnicities and grade level.

"They started off by saying jokingly, 'What up, white people,'" saidfreshman Megan Wiley, 14. Teachers flashed last year's test scores andtold the white crowd of students to do better for the sake of theirpeople.

Several parents later told the Times that the meetings smacked ofsegregation resurrected.

"Why did they have to divide the students by race?" said Filipinoparent Claddy Dennis, mother of freshman Schenlly Dennis. "In thiscountry, everybody is supposed to be treated equally. It sounds likeracism to me."

Principal Bev Hansen said she held the student assemblies by ethnicitythis year and last year to avoid one group harassing another based ontheir test scores. The 1,600-student campus, one of the mostethnically diverse high schools in the Mt. Diablo school district, isroughly half Latino, 30 percent white and 15 percent black, with Asiannationalities rounding out the mix.

Last year, the school improved its academic performance index score,largely based on test scores, to 613 out of 1,000. Among the races,Asians scored highest. Whites earned a 667. African-Americans scored a580, whereas Latinos earned a 571.

"I don't want students being teased," Hansen said.

Ultimately, however, Hansen said she did not know why parents seemedso concerned. The state has reported scores based on race for years.The school assemblies simply reflected those same categories inreporting the numbers to students, she said.

"In this country, race is a very uncomfortable topic, and it's time wegot over it," Hansen said.

Jack Jennings, president of the National Center on Education Policy, aleading education research group, called the racially divided meetingspotentially illegal and dangerous.

"It's segregation by race, whatever the motivation," Jennings said,noting that he had never heard before of a school or district doingsuch a thing.

He described the assemblies as a unique byproduct of the intense focuson testing.

Under the federal No Child Left Behind Act, schools, school districtsand states must report and are accountable for scores in reading andmath for specific races, English learners, special-education studentsand economically disadvantaged students. All statistically significantgroups must show continuous test score improvement.

"It shows that there's so much pressure to raise test scores thatteachers and administrators are trying to do anything they can,"Jennings said. "Sometimes what they choose is not very wise."

Last spring, California High School in the San Ramon Valley pulledLatino and black students in for pretesting pep talks but not whitestudents. The principal apologized after parents flooded the mayor'soffice with complaints.

"The way they were speaking, it was intended to make people feelgood," Rivera said. "I guess it was to inspire everybody, like you cando better."

Hispanic students made a 50-point gain on the state's 1,000-pointachievement scale. White students improved by 46 points, whereasEnglish learners posted the greatest rise, more than 80 points.

"There's nothing negative about these assemblies," said schoolsecretary Arnetta Jones, who is African-American and helped organizethe assembly for African-American students. "It wasn't, in any way, toput people down."

African-American students raised their score on the state academicperformance index by 61 points. "We showed an incredible amount ofimprovement on our test scores," Jones said.

The event also celebrated black culture, Jones said. Two studentsperformed a dance with choreography by African-American dancevisionary Alvin Ailey. A black pastor from Bay Point delivered amessage. One student read a poem that is the mantra of a blackfraternity from UC Berkeley.

"That kind of set the tone," Jones said.

However, some African-American students interpreted the school'smessages differently.

Freshman Jason Lockett, 14, said he saw the pictures of Martin LutherKing and the words, "Black Power" projected overhead. But the scores,despite being an increase over last year, still lag other races'.

"It was to compare us and say how much dumber we were than everybodyelse," Lockett said.

Principal Hansen said although some students were upset, they deserveto know the truth about lower test scores.

All the college level math your parents never had, and NONE of the math you'll need for college or the SAT. Plus everthing you ever wanted to know about Nike, Cocoa Krispies and KFC. If Maas thought McDougall Littell was bad, THIS IS WORSE. Your school may have this ridiculous math program if it accepted federal dollars to adopt this complete junk.

Posted by a friend of Where's the Math by the Crazy Asian American Dad.

Just caught Veoh in the Seattle Time business pages. Says they want to be a rival to Youtube with p2p movie sharing / stealing technology. Some conclusions after playing with it after a week and posting some of my YouTube and Google Video videos

* There's maybe 1/20 to 1/40 of the content. Search for any song and movie, and chances are it hasn't been posted yet

* Sometimes there's a pause in playing movies

* I think it's trying to show you more movies based on what you've seen.

* If you're POSTING movies, depending on the film, some get MORE on veoh. I can only explain this by the lack of competition for views because Youtube gets a lot more visitors. In general, hard to tell which ones do better on either, but generally numbers on one will be comparable to another, so it's definitely worth putting videos up FIRST on veoh, and then using pro to put up on other sites. Google Video only 3 months ago for my videos were about 1500 views for either site, but now GV is down to 150-250, while yt is up to 1500-2000 per day. I'm surprised Veoh is as strong for newly posted videos (even ones that have been up on YT for a while) as Youtube.

Jesus the River of Love, an audio with static slide got 25 hits first day on Veoh but only a handful on YouTube: This is effectively a world premiere of an average quality worship performance from 2004. I need to track down Brandy's definitive version which was made on a self-published church CD.

* Some of the pirated movies available look as good or better than DVD on a laptop when downloaded, and they are full length (or maybe they are TV shows). This, and the ability to download even poor quality video is much better than YouTube.

* Some nice extended length TV shows if not movies , the Madagascar movie I spotted was taken down, but clips and TV shows seem to stay up.

Updated:2007-02-24 16:52:01Sorority Evictions Raise Issue of BiasBy SAM DILLONThe New York Times(Feb. 24) - When a psychology professor at DePauw University here surveyed students, they described one sorority as a group of "daddy's little princesses" and another as "offbeat hippies." The sisters of Delta Zeta were seen as "socially awkward."

...

Delta Zeta's national officers interviewed 35 DePauw members in November, quizzing them about their dedication to recruitment. They judged 23 of the women insufficiently committed and later told them to vacate the sorority house.

The 23 members included every woman who was overweight. They also included the only black, Korean and Vietnamese members. The dozen students allowed to stay were slender and popular with fraternity men -- conventionally pretty women the sorority hoped could attract new recruits. Six of the 12 were so infuriated they quit.

"Virtually everyone who didn't fit a certain sorority member archetype was told to leave," said Kate Holloway, a senior who withdrew from the chapter during its reorganization. ....

Michael Jackson's entire music video "Thriller" done completely in Lego and clay.Includes not only the song, but all non-musical scenes as well.The resolution is horrible, but it is the best I could find where the video wasn't glitchy in several other ways (all of them had bad resolution anyway).Not bad overall, but hardly worth the 13+ minutes to watch it.

"As in the past, one number that stood out Thursday was the performance of Asian students, who perennially out-achieve students of all other ethnic backgrounds in every academic category. Gordon, the Sacramento superintendent, said he noticed that Asian graduates annually have some of the top grade point averages in his district, many of them after only recently immigrating to the United States and learning English."

http://www.sptimes.com/2007/02/22/Worldandnation/Advanced_courses_may_.shtmlAdvanced courses may not be all that advanced, some sayEducators say tests show U.S. high schools need a major overhaul.

Years of education reforms have failed to lift the performance of U.S. high school students, according to a gloomy set of numbers that stunned educators and brought calls Thursday for more urgency.

In the most recent national test on reading, the nation’s 12th-graders scored lower than they did in 1992. Only 73 percent scored at or above the “basic” level in the National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as The Nation’s Report Card. That was down from 80 percent in 1992.

Students showed a similar lack of traction in science. Learning gaps between white and minority students were as wide as ever.

“We clearly have a major problem, and it’s not going to be addressed just by some minor changes in our system,’’ said David P. Driscoll, the education commissioner of Massachusetts, which, like Florida, was an early adopter of strict school accountability.

Driscoll complained that American high schools have shorter years and shorter days than competing systems overseas. “Clearly,’’ he said at a news conference arranged by the National Assessment Governing Board, “we need to look at some major changes in the way schools are organized and the way teaching and learning is delivered.’’Results were not available by state.

The stagnation among high school students contrasts with gains made by younger students, especially those in elementary school. It also has occurred even as high school students are exposed, more than ever, to rigorous courses.

A study of 26,000 transcripts from public and private high school students who graduated in 2005 found that 51 percent took a “mid-level” or “rigorous” curriculum with challenging requirements for math, science and foreign languages. That was up from 30 percent in 1990.

“It’s a disconnect for sure,” said Margaret Spellings, the U.S. Education Secretary, in Tampa Thursday to discuss the federal No Child Left Behind Act. “It does affirm that, by damn, we better pay attention to our high schools.”

For many top educators, the search for causes leads back to classrooms. The chief explanation, they said, is that too many classes are rigorous in name only.

“It’s important what we teach and how it is taught has to be carefully inspected course by course, textbook by textbook, classroom by classroom,’’ said David Gordon, school superintendent in Sacramento, Calif.

He called on teachers and administrators to collaborate in making sure classes are as rigorous as they should be.

“This is difficult, time-consuming work,’’ he said. “But without pulling back the curtain and taking a hard look inside the classroom, nothing is likely to change.’’

Pinellas school superintendent Clayton Wilcox said many districts have begun talking about just such an exercise.

In Pinellas, he said, a two-year-old program to assess students more frequently will help the district detect gaps in teaching.

Wilcox also argued that the trends may not be as disheartening as they appear. Though graduation rates have been flat since the 1970s, he said, a case can be made that the actual number of students getting diplomas is up.

“You have kids (graduating) that never were there before,’’ he said.

What made Thursday’s results more alarming for some was the fact that the students tested were the best the system had to offer — kids who had made it to 12th grade and were ready to graduate. The numbers also included a slight decline among students whose parents graduated from college, another group thought to be high performers.

At the Education Trust in Washington, an advocacy group that rails against the achievement gap, president Kati Haycock said the numbers revealed a broad, systemic failure.

“Students are doing what is asked of them — they are taking more academic courses and getting higher grades — but they aren’t being taught any more than in the past,” she said, calling for more qualified teachers and higher expectations.

As in the past, one number that stood out Thursday was the performance of Asian students, who perennially out-achieve students of all other ethnic backgrounds in every academic category.

Gordon, the Sacramento superintendent, said he noticed that Asian graduates annually have some of the top grade point averages in his district, many of them after only recently immigrating to the United States and learning English.

“What we need to do is have our own American kids, born here, speaking the language from the time they’re born ... to get motivated about something other than their iPod,’’ said Driscoll, the Massachusetts official.

“There has to be a sense of urgency on behalf of everybody,’’ he said. “That includes, by the way, the kids.’’

What if Abraham Lincoln came back and told Ford what he really thought?

Man, what have to guys done to Ford and Lincoln. I mean, Lincoln used to be a great presidential ride (JFK: yeah, though did it have to be a convertible??) It was a leader only a decade ago and now it's an also-ran joke. You guys know know how to kill every best selling nameplate you have. What have to done to the Focus? A freaking restyle when everybody else as redone their platform? You've got world class Mazda 3 that you could rebadge as a Tracer or Bobcat, and the European Focus! Did any company regain leadership by cutting costs? Econoline E-series is in the top 20 seller, but has anything been done to it? Ranger, what's the point in killing off another top seller after Taurus and Windstar? Can't they reconfigure a Ranger out of an explorer or something? They make a terrific new truck in Thailand, and a killer sport-ute why not bring that over?

What's been done for the Crown Victoria/ Town Car? Sure the 500/Taurus is a bigger slower Volvo, but how many Volvos do Americans buy? Do you think the taxi cabs or cops will ever buy those cars? Bring over the Australian Falcon, and sell it as a Mercury Cougar and Ford Thunderbird. Sell the longer aussie LTD and Fairlane as a fleet police and taxi vehicle, and continental. It's got more horsepower and it's shorter, and you'll keep the Australian factories working, since the market over there is in decline.

And who's idea was it to engineer the Freestyle (now that's a dumb name) when the Mazda CX-9 is a much better vehicle? Why do the Edge and Cx-7 have completely different bodies? Who was the idiot who though renaming the Windstar (which everybody heard of ) to the Freestar would increase excitement and sales when the Toronto paper said it would be the Ford Fiasco and consumers would be confused? Any wonder it died off in two years, especially since the facelift was completely outclassed by all 3 new japanese and 2 new Korean full-length minivans? Didn't anybody know that the Chevy C-name were stupid too (Celebrity? Ugh.)

The Fusion is still a stupid name (though less stupid than Futura). Why not bring back the Torino to compete with the Charger and Malibu?

Who's idea was it to leave Mercury with no cars to appeal to anyone under 50? Mercury used to have compacts and subcompacts back to the Comet and Bobcat - after the retirement of the Tracer, Mystique and Cougar, they had nothing smaller than the Sable to sell.

Who did they think they were kidding with the old aviator? Just like the Versaillees / Granada. At least Toyota changes the body for a lexus.

What's with the MK-whatever name scheme? Who the heck is going to remember any of those letters?

Import the new turbo MPV with lazy boy 2nd row as a Lincoln Villager. Do what chrysler did to plymouth and rebadge everything as a Lincoln, but make the cars nicer than Fords. Give Lincoln an Mx-9. Make a 4 seater Thunderbird , a 4 door continental out of a 4 door Mustang, and a MK? coupe like they used to do, or do a Lincoln-ized 500, but do SOMETHING. Put a V8 in the Taurus 500, god everybody else in the segment has a v8 or a V6 with V8 power.

And the Milan - change it to the Mulan to attract Asians away from Camry's and Accords.

I grided my loins to peek at the rest of the Crap (Core Plus)textbook they gave my kids. It's sooooo big that the first year issplit up into two books. They only cover the first book, so itsays "algebra" and "triginometry" on the cover. Guess what's notinside? No basic algebra, and they use a TI-83 computer program to doROTATION but they don't introduce sines and cosines? You can't rotatesquat without trig.Trig isn't until the SECOND book. No logs at all.

My 8th and 9thgrader don't have a clue a to what the log of 100 base 10 is. (answeris 2) I haven't explained to them what the SIN key does on acalculator either. (I'll tell them when they get older)They've got markov's something or other, and 15 different kinds ofcorrelations. I'd judge that 99% of people on this list who didn'tget an engineering or statistics major have never seen 85% of thecontent.

An engineering major like me as actually seen translationand rotation done with a matrix, but it's nothing I ever needed toknow before college calculus. None of this stuff will be at allhelpful on the SAT, and you're dead if you don't have a TI-83. Mykids tell me an TI-84 will work, but not any other TI calculatorsince more advanced models don't have the GEO!@#$% program on itanymore that's key to about 75% of the investigations. They covervolume and area (but don't tell you what the formula is....)

There is no arithmetic or algebraic manipulation anywhere, it's allpunch out this sequence on your $120 calculator. We didn't adoptcalculators in our high school until 4 function square rootcalculators fell below $30 in 1976. Now they require $120 calcultorsto learn... nothing at all.This matches the Mathematically correct study where this girl who gotstraight As and all of her classmates were flunked into remedial mathin college, and the neighboring school dumped crap plus right away.Comments were something like we learned how to run everything on theTI-83, and not much else.Fortunately, traditional middle school math is pre-algebra andfirming up arithmetic, but if that UW prof thinks McDougall Littellwas scatter brained, this stuff is the worst.This is the textbook that starts out introducing matrixes with twopages of .... Reebok and Nike. And when you finishthe "investigation" on page 3, you find out you're just filling in a2D table, just like in 4th grade WASL math, and they call it amatrix????

My introduction to matrices was the Matrix ROM on the HP 9830computer which was designed for college-grad engineers. McDougallLittell was doing something similar "Use matrix multiplication tocompute Sally's bake sale proceeds". Who in the !@#$% uses matrixmultiplication to compute receipts????

This is all about bragging about raising standards 10 grade levelsahead when the PROBLEM is why their basic skill levels are 4 gradelevels behind! Core-Plus is designed to be used by ALL 9th graders,from remedial to advanced, so we'll have kids who can't add 12.1 +13.56 trying to explain what matrix you have to multiply to get theidentify matrix, and what key to punch to get there. (What, you don'tknow what TI-83 key to punch??? You don't deserve to pass the WASL!)I'm going to try to do a video review, wish me luck.

A Whole New World is the main song from the soundtrack to the 1992 Disney movie Aladdin. It was composed by Alan Menken with lyrics by Tim Rice. The song is a love ballad where Aladdin and Jasmine sing to each other about the new world they're going to discover together.

comScore Data Confirms Reports of 100 Million Worldwide Daily Video Streams from YouTube.com in July 2006

More than 63 Million People Globally Visited the Site During Same Month

RESTON, VA, October 11, 2006 – comScore Media Metrix, a leader in digital media measurement, today announced the results of an analysis of worldwide video streaming activity from YouTube.com, confirming that an average of 100 million video streams were served per day in July 2006.

In July, more than 63 million people (Age 15+) worldwide visited YouTube.com, 16 million of whom came from the U.S. On a daily basis, the site attracted an average of 6.2 million visitors worldwide, with 1.6 million residing in the U.S. The site also ranked as the 17th most visited property worldwide during the month.

YouTube.com – U.S. and Worldwide Traffic and Streaming Video Activity**

**Note: Streams are attributed to the property that provides the stream. For example, the YouTube data include streams that occurred on their Web property and on other properties whereby YouTube provided those streams.

While visitation is one metric for measuring a site’s popularity, comScore’s Video Metrix service possesses the unique capability of measuring actual streaming activity. In July 2006, YouTube served nearly 3 billion video streams worldwide, with slightly less than one-quarter of the total activity streamed to U.S. locations. On an average daily basis for the month, 96 million streams were served worldwide, and 21 million in the U.S.

“Several media outlets have reported that YouTube streamed 100 million videos daily in July, and the results of our recent study corroborate this report,” said Gian Fulgoni, Chairman of comScore Networks. “In fact, our daily streaming data show that YouTube.com first surpassed the 100 million threshold on July 17th, which coincides with YouTube’s own announcement that they had reached this impressive mark. Our streaming data covering more recent months will be published shortly, and will show that YouTube’s streaming total now far surpasses 100 million per day.”

According to comScore Networks, YouTube had about 41.5 million U.S. visitors in November, who streamed roughly 773 million videos. During the same period, Viacom's Web sites had about 19 million visitors, who streamed roughly 327 million videos.

West North Central5.765Mountain4.972Pacific21.0134New England5.597Mid Atlantic17.7125South Atlantic17.199East South Central3.461West South Central11.8118East North Central12.980Source: comScore Media MetrixAbout comScore NetworkscomScore Networks provides unparalleled insight into consumer behavior and attitudes. This capability is based on a massive, global cross-section of more than two million consumers who have given comScore explicit permission to

"Accountability" and "exit exam" is just another word for OBE. Does everybody else recognize this? This is also headed for the workplace under "performance based everything". You replace competition in a market with a test that fails everybody. Planned economy is the same thing. Does ANYBODY know what SAT score says that you qualify for a bachelor's degree?

Friday, October 06, 2006 Educators take different routes to get back to the basics in mathBy Linda Shaw

"Ready, set, start," Atkinson says, and they're off. For the next three minutes, students work steadily and silently while Atkinson watches the time.

Later, the North Beach Elementary room buzzes with conversation as students work with small, brightly colored blocks for a math lesson on area. But the timed exercise, which they do every morning, is the kind of practice that some argue is too rare in Washington classrooms.

One of their solutions to the state's math problems: Bring back more drills.

"I know people hate the 'drill and kill,' but I call it skill-building," said M.J. McDermott, a North Beach parent and meteorologist for KCPQ-TV. "You kind of have to get through the work to get the fluency."

Everyone agrees students need to learn the basics in math. The influential National Council of Teachers of Mathematics reinforced that view last month by repeating what its leaders say they've always said: Fourth-graders should multiply whole numbers fluently. Second-graders should quickly recall the sum of two plus five.

"But many women expressedfear that all the references to half of the Ivy League beingled by women would convey a false impression that genderequity in higher education had been "solved," while theyconsider that decidedly not to be the case."

Yes sounds like to me they've hired a president primarily as a woman feminist - columnists are still citing Sommer's statement that women have different goals than men without considering whether or not he might have made a correct statement.

The night before Drew Gilpin Faust was formally named president ofHarvard University, women involved in efforts to promote femaleleaders in academe happened to be gathering in Washington forworkshops and networking sessions held in conjunction with theannual meeting of the American Council on Education. During afund-raising pitch at a dinner, women were reminded that theprograms they support might just help someone who could become"the next president of Harvard."-- end of excerpt --

Education introduced a bilingual program to teach in local dialects based on studies that children learned better in a native language

*Erosion of English Skills Threatens Growth in Philippineshttp://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F10C1FFC385A0C778EDDA80994DE404482By CARLOS CONDEPublished: November 24, 2006

Angeli Boteros speaks English like an American teenager. Alifetime of watching American television and movies has left hersentences peppered with the trademark phrases of American youth,including ''like'' and ''you know.''

Ms. Boteros, 26, is so steeped in American popular culture, andhas such a good accent, that on the phone, she could pass for agirl from California.

Over the last year, she has been doing exactly that. As a callcenter agent at GCom, Ms. Boteros helps customers half a worldaway overcome problems with products or services they havepurchased.

''My friends used to tease me because of the way I speakEnglish,'' Ms. Boteros said at an open-air cafe in this boomingsouthern Philippine city. ''Not anymore.''

Davao City is one of several areas outside Manila where callcenter companies have been venturing, drawn by lower labor costsand large numbers of available workers.

But there has been concern lately that the industry's growth maybe limited by the deterioration of its main advantage: the Englishproficiency of the work force. According to a study conducted bythe European Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines, 75 percent ofthe more than 400,000 Filipino students that graduate from collegeeach year have ''substandard English skills.''

Chinese pupils are best-performing ethnic group with 86% passing nationalcurriculum testsSchoolchildren of Indian origin come second with 85% achieving the samestandardBut only 80% of white British pupils manage to reach a similar level inthe assessment

By Richard Garner, Education Editor

Children of Chinese origin have outperformed every other Britishgroup in English by the age of 11, according to an ethnic breakdownof exam and test results published yesterday.

They have the best results of all ethnic groups in nationalcurriculum tests at 11 with 86 per cent reaching the requiredstandard - compared with 80 per cent of white British children. Andthese figures include recent Chinese immigrants who do not haveEnglish as a first language.

Their success is carried through to GCSE level where 65.8 per centof Chinese-origin pupils obtain five A*- to C-grade passesincluding maths and English - under the Department for Educationand Skills' new measure used to rank schools. Pupils of Indianorigin also outperform the white British with a 59.1 per cent passrate, compared to 44.3 per cent for white British pupils.

The figures are revealed in an analysis of last year's GCSE andnational curriculum test results for pupils aged seven, 11 and 14.

More than 1,000 Chinese-origin pupils sat the English nationalcurriculum test for 11-year-olds last year - while 2,200 sat theirGCSEs. Experts say the culture at home for families of Chinese andIndian origin families puts more emphasis on the importance ofeducation.

The figures come amid a wave of angst over British children,prompted by a Unicef report which claimed that the quality of lifefor children in Britain was poor. Family relationships were citedas one of the main factors blighting childhood.

Parents in families of Chinese origin stress the value of homework- and many children attend special Saturday schools to improvetheir performance.

In A-levels, too, Chinese-origin pupils shine. A recent study bythe Royal Society of Chemistry and Institute of Physics revealedthat Chinese males were four times as likely (and Indian malesthree times) to achieve three or more science A-levels. The figuresare similar for girls. "Indian and Chinese students show a strongpreference for science at A-level compared to other ethnic groups,"said the report.

As a result, they are the most likely ethnic groups to choose tostudy science subjects in higher education.

"Chinese pupils of mixed white and Asian heritage, Irish and Indianpupils consistently achieve above the national average across keystage one [seven to 11-year-olds], key stage two [11 to14-year-olds] and key stage three [14 to 16-year-olds]," theanalysis concludes.

Yesterday's analysis also shows that girls outperform boys at alllevels in almost every exam - although the gap has narrowedslightly. "Overall, the difference in attainment of five or moreA*- to C-grade GCSEs or equivalent by gender has dropped slightlyfrom last year when it was 10.1 percentage points to 9.6 percentagepoints in 2006," it says.

But the biggest gender gap is between black Afro-Caribbean boys andgirls - sparking concerns about the performance of black boys inschools. Fewer than one in four Afro-Caribbean boys (22.7 per cent)achieve five top-grade GCSE passes compared with 36 per cent ofboys overall.

The breakdown follows an official report from the DfES, which drewattention to the exclusion rate for black Afro-Caribbean children -they were three times as likely to be excluded from school as whiteyoungsters. Their rate of permanent exclusions was four per 10,000compared with 1.3 for white pupils. Again, Chinese-origin pupilshad the lowest exclusion rate, with 0.2 per cent. The report said:"Black pupils are disproportionately denied mainstream educationand the life chances that go with it."

The low performance of black Afro-Caribbean boys has promptedministers to launch their "Aiming High" project, seeking to improvetheir performance by providing them with mentors.

The first independent analysis of the programme indicated that theyhad started to close the gap on their white classmates by doingbetter than ever in tests for 14-year-olds - traditionally a markerfor how well they will perform at GCSE. However, at that stage,they had still failed to narrow the gap at GCSE.

Andrew Adonis, the Schools minister, welcomed the findings. "Bigimprovements are being made," he said. But he acknowledged thatthere were "challenges ahead" for exclusion rates "and thestereotyping of black children as underachieving, troublesome orboth". The scheme operates in 100 secondary schools across 25 localauthorities.

The worst performance by an ethnic group came from Gypsy/Romapupils, where only 3.9 per cent obtained five top-grade GCSE passeswith maths and English, and travellers of Irish heritage, where thefigure was 11.1 per cent.

The analysis also showed that children from better-off homesoutperformed those pupils who received free school meals: 61 percent of those youngsters not in receipt of free school mealsobtained five A*- to C-grade GCSE passes compared with 33 per centof those from deprived backgrounds.

Ministers insist that poverty should be no excuse for poorperformance - and point to the success of some inner-city schoolsserving deprived communities.

From Beijing to Oxford via Brent

Yinan Wang is an example of the Chinese success story - winning aplace to read material sciences at Corpus Christi College at Oxfordaged just 14.

He won his place just two years after arriving in the UK, barelyable to speak a word of English. He went to one of the UK's largestcomprehensives, Copland Community College in Brent, north-westLondon, where he was given English classes.

He was singled out as a specially talented pupil and soon becamefluent in English. Yinan also completed an Open University degreein maths while at school.

In his A-levels he obtained As in maths, physics and chemistry.

Before attending his comprehensive, he was a pupil at the NumberEight middle school in Beijing which, according to his formerteacher Andrew Jones - head of chemistry at Copland - is "a mixtureof the Chinese Eton and a top French lyc�e".

Thursday, February 15, 2007

People are still screaming about all the Humvees that are getting blown up in Iraq that are being used as armoured cars. Now why in the world doesn't the US Military just buy some armoured cars like every other military? You've got the Hummer, then the Striker and Bradley, and nothing inbetween . Those guys in South Africa have been using tall V-hull trucks for ages.

Even in Vietnam, they created armoured trucks, and put shields and extra guns on the M113 to make the ACAV (which they're deploying to Iraq finally, but in tiny numbers) The Humvee isn't an armoured car, and it's still not a very good one even when you tack on armour. We used to, and still make a vehicle that designed precisely to do this sort of thing, get shot at and blown up and come back, it's the Caddilac Commando that the USAF use to use for base security. The latest version is the Textron M1117 AVS, it's designed to stand up to 50 cal armour piercing shot (the Sheridan light tank and M113 could'nt stand up to that), mines, and even RPGs minus a crewman or two. The Army has ordered these --- for Military Police units (?) Now does that make sense that front line soldiers fight in a un or minimally armoured Humvee, but security units BEHIND the lines get an armoured car?? The Navy / Marines are finally evaluating it as one of a number of proposed armoured trucks, but it's the only one with slanted sides.

For the price of a force of Bradleys, M-1s and Strikers, you could buy a bazillion of these.

Mike Riley for Seattle Schools? NOOOOOOO!Ch13 reports that Seattle is looking at Bellevue's Mike Riley for their new superintendent. Oh God No. That guy is crazy. He made the cover of newsweek for best school district ... based on what? On percentage of kids TAKING advanced placement tests. His idea is to REQUIRE every student to meet HIGH STANDARDS by taking this test to get a high school diploma. AP means proving that you are capable of COLLEGE level academic material. Why in the heck would you require proving you can do college level work just to get a diploma that says you are capable of high school level work? He also told me he didn't see why they couldn't arrange the math curriuculum so that everybody could take calculus. He's also been fighting with parents who hate "Investigations" anti-math standards.

This "let them all have BMWs" attitude is typical of the "trophy student" mentality that has taken over public education. Excellence for all is not excellence, since by defintion, it's the performance of the top few. If everybody is excellent, the word has no meaning. Standards based education is just a rehash of the old Outcome based education, it's the belief that if you just come up with standards and tests to establish what the best kids can do, and then implement a system of carrots and sticks to require EVERYBODY to perform at the same level, we can simply legislate that everybody perform at a new, higher grade level. ARGH!

Olechefske and Stanford were both standards-bots. Then they had a sham selection for their academic officer where all 5 finalists were black women, obviously to make up for replacing a black Stanford with a bald white guy, after we passed the initiative banning selection of people by race. The odds of picking a demographic that is 5% of the population 5 times in a row is less than getting a jackpot on a one-armed bandit, but the Seattle schools wrote me a letter saying that race had nothing to do with the selection. Right.

At least Manhas wasn't a standards-bot, he was an administrator worried about not running schools into the ground, which is exactly what a superintendent should do. Well, I'm offering myself for the job again. I applied for the last melt-down process where every applicant quit, and they turned me down .Where do I apply? I also nominate MJ McDermott. She can't run for office, but with her "Inconvenient Truth About Math", she know what's going on in standardes based education reform which seeks to eliminate math and reading as we know it, not promote the same standards every previous generation was held to.

Yes, somebody else who thinks Fusion is a stupid name. Bring back the Torino, Starsky and Hutch would approve. That would match Malibu and Charger, and NASCAR where the Torino was such a terror it gave birth to the Daytona and Superbird. If they had done it in 2006, it would also have matched the winter Olympics.

The Taurus was essentially a full-size car, but if they give the name to the 500, bring back the original grill-less taurus nose!

And stick a V8 in the thing for pete's sake, the SHO had one. GM and Chrysler both offer V8s and the Avalon has has many horses anyways.

Ford should also replace the crown vic with those australian cars - they still have falcons, fairmonts, and LTDs and they look AWESOME.

Import the new MPV as a Lincoln to replace the montery.

Whoever decided to redo the old Focus should be shot. You don't become a leader by saving money, you build the best cars. Everybody LOVES the Mazda 3, and the Mazda 6 worked wonders for the Fusion. Junk the Focus and re-badge the Mazda 3 as a Mercury Tracer.

Yes, somebody else who thinks Fusion is a stupid name. Bring back the Torino, Starsky and Hutch would approve. That would match Malibu and Charger, and NASCAR where the Torino was such a terror it gave birth to the Daytona and Superbird. If they had done it in 2006, it would also have matched the winter Olympics.

The Taurus was essentially a full-size car, but if they give the name to the 500, bring back the original grill-less taurus nose!

And stick a V8 in the thing for pete's sake, the SHO had one. GM and Chrysler both offer V8s and the Avalon has has many horses anyways.

Ford should also replace the crown vic with those australian cars - they still have falcons, fairmonts, and LTDs and they look AWESOME.

Import the new MPV as a Lincoln to replace the montery.

Whoever decided to redo the old Focus should be shot. You don't become a leader by saving money, you build the best cars. Everybody LOVES the Mazda 3, and the Mazda 6 worked wonders for the Fusion. Junk the Focus and re-badge the Mazda 3 as a Mercury Tracer.

Thursday, February 01, 2007

Chicago Tribune / Seattle Times Feb 1, 2007Black youth are more conservative when it comes to gay rights, abortion compared to whites. Survye charts show blacks compared to whites, and hispanics, but no Asian figures, though included in survey question (are you c. asian)

http://chronicle.uchicago.edu/070201/youthstudy.shtmlOn social issues, the surveys found that African-American young people are more likely to agree that homosexuality is always wrong (55 percent for blacks, 36 percent for Hispanics and 35 percent for whites). A majority of African-American youth also opposed legalizing same-sex marriages, (58 percent for blacks, 36 percent for Hispanics and 35 percent for whites).

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chicago/chi-0702010149feb01,1,2988114.story?coll=chi-newslocalchicago-hedThe survey was geared toward black attitudes and used a random sample of young people of various backgrounds: 635 blacks, 567 whites, 314 Hispanics and 74 of other races